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Election officers want later 2012 primary start

The nation's election administrators are
determined to shorten the 2012 presidential contest by pressing for
a later start to primary voting.

Meeting in Minneapolis at their annual conference Friday,
leading members of the National Association of Secretaries of State
said they hoped to persuade Democrats and Republicans to prevent
the type of calendar frontloading that triggered such an early
start to last year's nominating season.

Iowa kicked off the 2008 voting with its Jan. 3 caucuses. New
Hampshire's voting followed five days later.

"I hear from everyone involved in this debate that the early
start dates - and the uncertainty of those start dates - were not
good for the public, were not good for the candidates, were not
good for democracy," said Kentucky's Trey Grayson, a Republican
and incoming president of the national Secretaries of State group.

Iowa Secretary of State Mike Mauro, a Democrat, said his state's
caucuses came earlier than ever because other states were
encroaching on Iowa's traditional first-in-line status. The Iowa
campaign reached its climax amid the Christmas and New Year's
holiday bustle.

"It puts an extreme burden on everybody," Mauro said. "It
draws out the process. I don't think the candidates want it. I know
the states don't want it."

Committees for both national political parties are meeting over
the next few months. They're expected to make recommendations on
their respective nominating calendars by January. It will be longer
before anything is adopted.

A resolution establishing the Democratic commission sets a goal
of preventing any voting before February 2012. Meanwhile,
Republicans are working to "ensure that everyone is aware of the
primary calendar well ahead of the primary season," party
spokesman LeRoy Coleman said.

Secretaries of state involved in primary issues said moving
primaries out of January would be a start. Beyond that, they'd like
to see a move toward regional primaries to follow the Iowa and New
Hampshire voting.

The rotating regional primary idea has been on the table for
several years but gained little traction.

The national group's plan would divide the country into East,
South, Midwest and West regions, with each having a primary once a
month from March to June. The initial order for primaries would be
set by lottery and shift sequentially every four years.

Advocates say it would draw in more voters, allow cash-strapped
candidates to focus their campaigning and bring a broader array of
issues into the nominating process. For example, water-use issues
could drive debate in the West while agriculture could dominate the
discussion in the Midwest.

But the hurdles to enacting it are steep. Aside from getting the
political parties onboard, the plan would require states to amend
their election laws.

Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed, a Republican, said a
change of that magnitude would be "enormously difficult" to
achieve, at least in time for the next presidential election.

"One of the real issues is if Congress needs to act and say
this is the way it needs to be," Reed said. "There's resistance
to that obviously, but that is a possibility."